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An “Ambassador” amongst “box wallahs”

Maharajakrishna Rasgotra, India’s foreign secretary from 1982 to 1985, records that in 1948, contrary to the popular perception, the wealthy “Doon School wallahs” preferred to join the domestic services, where they could keep an eye on their assets, and that the IFS boys were at a premium only amongst the urbanised, “sophisticated girls of marriageable age and their even more pretentious socialite mothers”! Things have changed considerably since then. Ambitious Indian girls and boys now routinely choose to work and live abroad, on their own steam, rather than as “diplomatic baggage”.

But true to nature’s rule, when one door shuts, another inevitably opens. Losing out in the marriage market place has been compensated now for the IFS by major Indian corporates wooing them post-retirement. Just-retired foreign secretary S. Jaishankar has been picked up by the Tatas to head the group’s overseas operations, reporting to Mr N. Chandrasekharan, the executive chair of the board of Tata Sons, the holding company of all Tata enterprises. The board already has two retired civil servants — Ronen Sen, a ex-IFS officer and former ambassador to Washington, and Vijay Singh, an ex-IAS officer who served as defence secretary. But unlike these board level directors, Mr S. Jaishankar will be more substantively involved, with a hands-on role, as the President of a business vertical. “Descent from heaven” is how Japanese business describes the practice of absorbing retiring senior bureaucrats, who have held key positions, to cushion them from a hard landing in the real world.

Mr S. Jaishankar is reported to have said he was happy to join “the Tata Group… India’s most respected brand globally”. Just this simple endorsement of the Tata business leadership, from a recently retired foreign secretary, who was selected personally (unusually) by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015, to replace a serving foreign secretary, Sujata Singh, is sufficient to justify the Rs 6 crores that he is speculated to be paid per year. As far as value for money in advertising goes, it can’t get any better for the Tatas.

Despite the 1991 liberalization, Indian business remains constrained by red tape at home. Overseas, it is an orphan, with little formal support from its home government. Blame our perverted colonial legacy for this. The British came to India to trade, profit, export and rule. They used every trick in their mercantilist book of “free trade”, including the selective use of state power and the law, to benefit British companies. But, in a classically hypocritical stance — which incidentally appealed greatly to the convoluted sensibilities of upper-caste Indians, the average British officer feigned a horror of being in bed with business interests. The “boxwallah” was an inferior being as compared to his Army or civil service brethren, who were on a morally superior mission of civilizing India.

Colonial hypocrisy persists – “it is not the business of government to help business”

This “red line” between government and business, which Free India inherited, though always surreptitiously porous, has long since dissolved for India’s domestic service cadres — except for odd cases of the most particular officers. The foreign service, however, has taken to these new commercial roles, over the past decade, as the overseas business interests of private Indian corporates have expanded. This is a welcome outcome of liberalization.

Talk of being a market-led economy is hollow, unless the government works actively to grow the Indian private sector at home and abroad. At the most minimal level, this involves opening doors abroad for our businessmen. This is what retired IAS or revenue service officers having been doing for business interests, at home. But opening doors is low-level stuff, albeit with high personal returns. More potentially transformative, is the opportunity to develop an institutionalized public-private partnership, around the human resources required, by “India Unlimited” to become an A-level international player.

Big is not beautiful

With 162 missions overseas, the Indian Foreign Service looks extremely stretched, with just 600-plus serving elite officers. Expanding the service — using the existing generalist skills-based platform on which it is recruited and trained — would be a costly mistake. It would be far better to add the human resources, specifically needed in the ministry and in the missions overseas, through multiple entry options – lateral contracting, deputation from other services based on relevant skills and selective promotion from within.

Create a new position-based Apex Public Service Ecosystem

The origin of an exclusive service for external affairs, as opposed to a combined one for political and external matters lies, in the Government of India Act 1935. The idea at that time was racist. A separate “political” wing to deal with Asiatic powers — namely the Indian princes (there was already a separate home department for police and security matters) and a “foreign” wing to deal with the European powers.

Is it time now to end this farcical divide. “India unlimited” should have a seamless, internationally competitive and standards compliant architecture. inside, out. An integrated, elite Apex Public Service ecosystem for the Government of India, consisting of no more than 3,000 officers, could be a targeted support mechanism. Selected by the UPSC on merit, at mid-career, with a minimum experience of 10 years, it would provide the specific position-based skills and expertise, required for formulating policy and representing India at technical negotiating fora in trade and intellectual property; fiscal management, including tax; economic development and technology; social protection; human development and human rights.

A foreign secretary has boldly and transparently opted to step directly into an executive role in an Indian corporate entity. Over the last decade retired IFS officers have taken to self-acquiring a life long title, copying the US practice, of “Ambassador” – a reminder perhaps of their once hallowed status as a flag officer oversees. Now, many more may cross the divide between them and the “boxwallahs”. But till it becomes common to see retired IFS folk jostling amongst the corporate crowd, it will be odd to see an “Ambassador” parked at Bombay House, the Mumbai headquarters of the global Tata empire, rather than at Birla Building in Kolkata, which is the original owner of the brand.

Adapted from the authors opinion piece in The Asian Age, April 28, 2018 http://www.asianage.com/opinion/columnists/280418/govt-india-inc-time-to-diffuse-the-red-lines.html

Published by Sanjeev Ahluwalia

Sanjeev S. Ahluwalia is currently Advisor, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi and an independent consultant with core skills in economic regulation, institutional development, decentralization, public sector performance management and governance. He is an Honorary Member of the TERI Advisory Board and a Honorary Member of the CIRC Management Committee. He was a Senior Specialist with the Africa Poverty Reduction and Economic Management network of the World Bank for over seven years, 2005-2013. He has over a decade of experience at the national level in the Ministry of Finance, Government of India as Joint Secretary, Disinvestment from 2002 to 2005 and earlier in the Department of Economic Affairs in commercial debt management and Asian Development Bank financed projects and trade development with East Asia in the Ministry of Commerce. He was also the first Secretary of the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission from 1999 to 2000. He worked in TERI as a Senior Fellow from 1995 to 1998 in the areas of governance and regulation of the electricity sector and institutional development for renewable energy growth. Previously he served the Government of Uttar Pradesh, India in various capacities at the District and State level from 1980 onwards as a member of the Indian Administrative Service. His last job was as Secretary Finance (Expenditure management) Government of UP from 2001 to 2002. He has a Masters in Economic Policy Management from Columbia University, New York; a post graduate Diploma in Financial Management from the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University and a Masters in History from St. Stephens College, Delhi.
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